Technology is taking the lead in healthcare. We all do and strive to work towards what we desire but are we taking care of ourselves in the process are the million-dollar questions. mHealth apps and digital doctors are showing promising opportunities for the entire healthcare industry.
We all carry out our daily work with the hope that everything will get better and be better the way we want it. Though we all hope and make plans, still something unexpected happens and the most unexpected thing to happen is falling sick. In traditional systems, patients used to get treated for their illness by doctors, nurses, and hospitals. But, in the current world, where technological innovations dominate the globe, we barely have time or rarely allocate time to see a doctor and get done check-up. This is the era of telemedicine, mHealth and digital doctors. Now, instead of visiting clinic or any other healthcare centre, we try to surf our medications over internet.
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With technological changes and trends, anybody in the world can connect with each other for any purpose. This has become possible with internet as a medium and even more with mobile applications integrated with internet. Healthcare solutions are at the tip of our fingers today, making mHealth apps and digital doctors the future in healthcare sector.
A little more about mHealth apps.
mHealth apps are also called mobile healthcare applications. These applications work on mobile as a platform and there are various types of mHealth apps for patients. They work on the internet.
There are various apps based on the purposes they serve. With the rise of mHealth apps, the future of healthcare industry looks even more expansive. The opportunities available are numerous. Based on the purpose served, mHealth apps and digital doctors are categorized into the some of the following for eHealth benefits.
Fitness mHealth apps and digital doctors.
Fitness mHealth apps, like 7-minute workout challenge, focus on the physique, mental, emotional fitness of the individual.
These are focused on food and nutrition tracking. These records help doctors see the history of the patient or the help the patient themselves to understand what should be changed in their medication.
mHealth apps and digital doctors focused on women’s health.
MHealth apps that are focused on providing service to women. Apps like Clue, which offer pregnancy care and resources to support hassle-free pregnancy, are getting great traction. They also include fertility care.
Artificial Intelligence based mHealth apps and digital doctor aid.
The best example of AI based mHealth app is Babylon Health. Apps like this one work on the concept of machine learning. Tons of healthcare data is fed into a system which acts as a server to the app. This app is accessed by users and when they type symptoms they get results from the data fed in the server. This way more illness is met and cured at a faster rate. These data are verified by certified doctors too so there is no need to worry about the credibility of the medical data.
General mHealth apps and digital doctors.
These apps provide the service of connecting the user to a doctor who is available online or to a hospital that can service online. In certain cases, the app also allows the user to connect to a hospital or a doctor and get advice on their medical condition or set up an appointment; e.g. Epocrates.
These kinds of apps also have an alert system that sends data to the appropriate physician in case of any triggering illness is found from the user’s interaction with the app.
Why mHealth apps and digital doctors are popular.
Use of mobile technology, health apps, and services by patients and providers alike is rapidly increasing. This is because mHealth apps come with lots of benefits not only for healthcare providers but also for patients. It solves a number of issues existing in traditional mode of delivering patient care.
- It streamlines care system to a great extent and saves lot of admin time of hospitals like booking appointments, scheduling appointments, scheduling follow-ups, maintaining individual patient records, etc.
- Monotonous and repetitive tasks like creating and managing patient databases, sending care and post care flyers, and hospital onboarding are reduced drastically with the help of mHealth apps.
- On the other hand, patients can also get benefitted by such apps.
- they can track their personal health data in real time regardless of the location
- they can approach their digital doctors to seek medical advice, at any time, from any corner of the world
In all, we can say that the concept of mHealth apps and digital doctors is beneficial to the society as well as economy due to the Connected Care Between doctor’s office visits they offer.
The future with mHealth apps and digital doctors.
With machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence, the opportunities of handling data have become more efficient and effective. They use business analytics and heavy programming where data are correlated and it gives best results that are foreseen in nature too. Hence, it allows predicting and stopping chronic illness from spreading too.
Currently, there are more than 318,00m mHealth apps found in Play Store and App Store, with at least a minimum of 200 new mHealth apps added every day. The global market of healthcare sector values this digital healthcare at around $28.320 billion in 2018 and expected to increase to $102.35 billion by 2023. The market potential of these healthcare apps will increase to 67% in USA, 30% in UK, 21% in Germany this year. Globally usage of these apps of digital doctors is 30% and going to hospitals is also 30%. This indicates that the future of healthcare industry lies with these apps and digital medium.
Over to you!
The process of medication and treating an illness becomes automated with mHealth apps and digital doctors. There can be drastic reduction in the queuing time to treat patients. This allows treating people from remote areas too and thus eradicating the term illness from everyone’s life. Digital doctors and mHealth apps provide a connected healthcare service.
With technology getting improved every day the possibility for mHealth apps and digital doctors to give a personalized service or care to a user or patient is higher. This increases the chances and opportunities for the patient to self-diagnose their condition and be aware of their illness. This allows the patient to be aware and conscious even if the doctor makes a wrong prediction about their condition. This increases awareness among the people and thus making the crowd population smarter which also reduces the medical crime rate in turn. Consultation, monitoring and taking care of diseases in remote places is much easier with these possibilities. Are you ready for this connected healthcare era?